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This essay contributes to and reframes the preliminary scholarly assessments of President Donald J. Trump's appeals to rage, malice, and revenge by sketching the rhetorical dimensions of an underly...

Marx and Nietzsche, the two lodestars of modern philosophical anthropology, differ most interestingly not in their moral outlooks — which are indeed contradictory--but in their explanatory methods. Marx has, as it were, no psychology, only an anthropology and economics, while Nietzsche relies almost exclusively on explanation in terms of individual psychology, appearing at times willfully blind to social and economic causes. This difference is most apparent in their contrasting approaches to human suffering. Marx understands suffering to be primarily a consequence of socio-economic circumstances, while Nietzsche traces it primarily to defects in individual psychology and physiology (the latter manifesting themselves at the psychological level). To put it crudely, for Nietzsche, most people are by nature “sick” and thus disposed to suffer, regardless of socio-economic circumstances, while for Marx, people’s suffering is an artifact of their socio-economic circumstances, and thus amenable to amelioration. I consider various kinds of evidence for Nietzsche’s thesis — including the existence of religious orthodoxy among the affluent; the social phenomenon of “aggrievement hunters”; and the prevalence of ascetic moralities and of non-guilty means for assuaging suffering — concluding that it does not clearly support Nietzsche’s explanation for suffering against Marx’s. Along the way, I show that Nietzsche (like Marx) views religion as an “opiate,” but (unlike Marx) he deems it a necessary one given the socio-economic prerequisites for great culture. I also examine Nietzsche’s opposition to blame for suffering. I conclude with a diagnosis of Nietzsche’s own antipathy towards the “sick” as a kind of Freudian reaction formation.

In this paper I track the deployment of Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment by three major thinkers in postcolonial theory, namely Frantz Fanon, Edward Said and Achille Mbembe. My argumen...

This chapter explores the thorny gender politics of anger in contemporary culture. While historically women have been denied rage as a political and communicative resource, in the #MeToo era it is often suggested that female anger is being ‘unleashed’, and therefore finally giving rise to meaningful voice. The chapter seeks to theorise a more ambivalent relationship between rage and communicative (in)justice, by putting critiques of #MeToo in dialogue with philosophies of anger and ressentiment. Criticisms of #MeToo point to the prevalence of personal narratives of anger directed at individual men—the ‘bad apple’ approach—which are seen to come at the expense of structural critique and collective rage. However, this chapter ultimately argues that seeking to banish or pathologise individual anger born from personal woundedness risks doing further symbolic harm to those who have been abused.

The article explores the role that Max Scheler’s emotional phenomenology plays in the genesis of Albert Camus’ pensee de Midi by reading L’Homme revolte (1951) in the light of the French writer’s intense intellectual dialogue with the German phenomenologist’s writings on love and its "perversions", in particular L’Homme du ressentiment and Nature et formes de la sympathie. Imbued with Nietzsche’s project of a transvaluation of all values, Camus develops a personal phenomenology of revolt and, investigating its relationship with resentment, he traces in the peculiar loving attitude of the rebel the way out of contemporary nihilism.

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A course of action plays out in the margins of Raymond Queneau’s early novel that provides an object lesson in the peculiar phenomenon of self-accusation. The character assigned this unfortunate fate seems intent on pulling at the thread that will make him unravel, for reasons no one else can understand, driven by a conscience that will never be satisfied with the sacrifices made to appease it. The contradictions and tensions characteristic of the process of self-accusation will be approached here with Nietzsche’s idea of ressentiment in mind, that form of existence which shows remarkable inventiveness in the pursuit of its own abasement.

I thank Cressida Heyes and Lisa Kall for their careful and generous readings, and especially for the questions they pose. Even as Heyes and Kall raise very different kinds of concerns, each fundamentally requires that I reflect more carefully upon the issues of philosophical method that took me on the improbable path that resulted in Making Sense of Intersex. I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to their criticisms among philosophers at the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Though I cannot respond in detail to all of the questions raised by Heyes or Kall, I will try to address what I see as those which most directly challenge my arguments.RESPONSE TO HEYES: BACK TO NIETZSCHEHeyes is skeptical of my invocation of Nietzsche and the value of my proposal that ressentiment is a motivating force in the surgical and hormonal normalization of the bodies of children with atypical sex anatomies. Heyes contrasts my identification of ressentiment in the response of medical specialists who promote unnecessary medical interventions for intersex anatomies with Wendy Brown's identification of ressentiment in her critique of identity politics in "Wounded Attachments" (Brown 1993): "Is ressentiment a generalizable attitude" Heyes asks, "in which those who deviate from the norm are punished for their jouissance through moralizing revenge, or is it (as for Brown) the moralizing revenge of the disempowered?" (Heyes 2016: 795). In other words, it doesn't seem to follow that physicians, who occupy positions of power and authority, can be understood to express ressentiment in their treatment of obviously powerless children.To Heyes it might appear that an obvious extension of a Nietzschean analysis in the context of thinking about intersex would focus, as Brown vividly puts it, on "the wounded character of politicized identity's desire" (Brown 1993: 391). Brown casts a harsh light on contemporary claims to politicized identity, what in the 1990s was often expressed with respect to subjugated racial and sexual categories. Brown sees in the "desire for recognition" marked by politicized identity claims, a reiteration of "regulatory, disciplinary society" (398). Following Foucault-yet critical of what she sees as Foucault's "curious optimism" his "confidence" concerning the possibilities of resistance (397)-Brown cautions that rather than emancipation, these claims to identity, expressed, as they must be, within the terms of"discourses of liberal essentialism and disciplinary normalization," effectively replicate or reinforce the mechanisms of power that produced the subjugated positions from which activists now claim authority (398). In elaborating this claim, Brown brings Nietzsche into the analysis, identifying proponents of identity politics and their claims to civic membership and political rights with those "slaves" in Nietzsche's genealogy whose revolt resulted in the transvaluation of values.Reading Brown today, I might see in the claims by some intersex activists, including those wholly focused on demedicalizing intersex, an illuminating comparison. The skepticism Brown expresses with respect to prospects for resistance grounded in identity claims is a prudent reminder of the skepticism we should exercise with respect to the promise of legal and political "fixes" focused on the problem of assigning gender to newborns with what is still called "ambiguous" sex.Take for example the acclaim that greeted the 2012 German law mandating a sex assignment of "X" to intersex infants instead of "M" or "F" Hailed as an important advance, the German law has been repeatedly misrepresented in news media throughout Europe and the US as offering parents a "choice" in sex assignment of their children (see, e.g., Bendavid 2013; Heine 2013). As the Swiss activist group Zwischengeschlecht ("Between Genders") explained when the law went into effect, this legislation does not in fact provide parents with increased options, but formally prohibits registration of children with intersex as "M" or "F" Physicians, not parents, are vested with the authority to register children's sex assignment. …

It has gone largely unnoticed that when Deleuze opposes the “private thinker” to the “public professor,” he is invoking the existential thought of Lev Shestov (1866–1938). The public professor defends established values and preaches submission to the demands of reason and the State; the private thinker opposes thought to reason, “idiocy” to common sense, a people to come to what exists. Private thinkers are solitary, singular and untimely, forced to think against consensus and “the crowd.” Deleuze takes from Shestov and Kierkegaard the idea that genuine thinking manifests itself in a thinking which rebels against rational necessity, a theme central to Shestov’s leading French interpreter, Benjamin Fondane (1898–1944). Although Deleuze at first (Nietzsche et la philosophie. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1962) expresses doubts as to whether Shestov’s critique of reason can overcome the legislative reason of Kant, or whether it is entirely free of ressentiment, I argue that Shestov and Fondane’s anti-rationalism is more radical than Deleuze sometimes admits, and show how Deleuze’s attitude toward Shestov became more unreservedly positive over the years. On the other hand, against Shestov and Fondane, I agree with Deleuze that the private thinker is in solidarity with the “strange powers” which can remake the world, and thus with “the people to come.” Nonetheless, I argue that Deleuze’s philosophy cannot form the basis of a politics of egalitarian consensus, but that “the people to come” can only be a “broken chain” of untimely and singular exceptions.

This chapter examines the various strategies deployed by Beckett’s characters in his drama Endgame (1957) to bear their suffering in a world dominated by physical pain, ageing and decay, and by feelings of frustrated powerlessness, or ressentiment. Reading the characters’ reactive, defensive postures as bound to their experience of chronic pain and physical deterioration, this chapter observes their incapacity to constitute themselves as efficacious agents through narrative means. It then focuses on their repudiation of, and yet continued dependence upon, Christian theodicy, their recourse to retributive cruelty, and their invocation of a witnessing audience as alternative means to render their suffering existence tolerable.

This chapter argues that Amery’s account of resentment is influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s account of revenge and ressentiment and that resentment provides an existential means which assists Amery in refiguring his social standing as a Holocaust survivor in post-war Europe. He elaborates his account while concurrently drawing out the limitations of Nietzsche’s account. From Amery’s standpoint, his theory of resentment is fit to expose the horrors of the Holocaust that the demand for reconciliation and assimilation strives to repress. His steadfast commitment to resentment is an existential mechanism to resist the oblivion that post-war Europe expects from Jewish communities.

Обретя в нынешний век беспрецедентные возможности изменять мир и самого себя, человек остаётся бессильным против одного из своих главных несовершенств — бремени ненависти. Этот порок не только неистребим: сегодня он продолжает разрастаться, получая моральную легализацию в социуме. Постижение этого феномена требует глубинной оптики, затрагивающей основы человеческого существа. Такой взгляд возможен благодаря ницшеанской концепции рессентимента. С одной стороны, она позволяет зафиксировать глубочайший декаданс нынешнего человека, с особой остротой ставя вопрос утраты им своего потенциального величия. С другой стороны, человек предстаёт здесь существом открытым, неустановившимся, ещё не обретшим свой окончательный облик. Это заставляет нас ощутить особую ответственность за дальнейшую эволюцию человека, задуматься о возможных усилиях по его социокультурному преобразованию., Having acquired nowadays unprecedented possibilities to change the world and himself, man remains helpless against one of his basic flaws — the burden of hatred. This vice is not only ineradicable: at present it continues to grow and expand, obtaining moral legalisation in society. Comprehension of this phenomenon requires deep penetration into the foundations of human being. This view becomes possible due to the Nietzschean conception of ressentiment. On the one hand, it allows fixation of profound decadence of the modern man, raising the question of his loss of his potential greatness with special acuteness. On the other hand, man appears here an open, immature being who had not yet attained his personality. This makes us feel special responsibility for man’s further evolution, think about possible efforts aimed at his sociocultural transformation.

Various therapeutic discourses on trauma claim that a successful working through of a traumatic experience amounts to forgiveness and the victim’s reconciliation with the past. Recently, several voices have been raised against this claim, arguing that refusal to forgive is a sort of moral dignity, a defense of the victim’s integral subjectivity, and a moral protest against the unjustifiable evils and wrongdoings the victim has suffered. Among the emotions the victim is left with after the traumatic experience and after the reluctance to forgive the perpetrators and get along with life are, of course, anger, hate, indignation, depression, humiliation, and shame. An additional and far more complex emotion that characterizes the posttraumatic experience is ressentiment. Forgiveness and ressentiment are discussed as moral stances against evils and traumas. The basic tenets are: (1) the link between agency, forgiveness, and memory; (2) the moral nature of ressentiment as a Schelerean concept that parts company not only from resentment (qua moral indignation) but also from grudges and envy; (3) the dismembering of forgiveness and ressentiment premised not on the victim’s resistance to dealing with the past (or moral hypermnesia), as is usually thought, but on the process of transvaluation inherent in ressentiment, which places forgiveness beyond the victim’s hermeneutic horizon.

The paper addresses the problem of the relation between ressentiment and Islamic terrorism. The analyses of that correspondence are carried out on the basis of reflections of Friedrich Nietzsche, a renowned German scholar and creator of the first theory of ressentiment, and two American researchers – Lauren Langman and Douglas Morris. In the author’s view, the transition from ressentiment to terrorism essentially stem from the mechanism of the revaluation of values and the reaction to its final product, namely compensatory values, that manifest itself in the form of fundamentalism and fanatism.

A partir de um caso clínico explora-se o tema do ressentimento sob a óptica da psicanálise. Ao abordar aspectos singulares da vida do paciente desenvolvem-se reflexões sobre o tema do ressentimento e as condições de aprisionamento atualizadas nesta história. Destaca-se a contribuição da psicanálise em seus recursos teóricos e técnicos na instauração da escuta do ressentimento. Based on a clinical case the author explores the theme of resentment from a psychoanalytic point of view. Addressing singular aspects of the patient's life, issues related to resentment and situations of imprisonment are discussed. Contributions from psychoanalysis are presented as related to theoretical and technical possibilities for listening in cases of resentment. Cet article examine le thème du ressentiment du point de vue de la psychanalyse à partir d'un cas clinique. En abordant les aspects uniques de la vie du patient, nous développons des réflexions sur le thème du ressentiment et des conditions d'emprisonnement actuelles de son histoire. Nous mettons en évidence l'apport de la psychanalyse, soit ses ressources théoriques et techniques qui permettent réaliser l'écoute du ressentiment. A partir de un caso clínico se explora el tópico del resentimiento desde la perspectiva psicoanalítica. Al abordar los aspectos singulares de la vida del paciente se desarrollan reflexiones sobre el tema del resentimiento y las condiciones de aprisionamiento actualizadas en esta historia. Se destaca la contribución del Psicoanálisis en sus recursos teóricos y técnicos en la instauración de la escucha del resentimiento. Aufgrund eines klinischen Falls wird das Thema Ressentiment aus der Perspektive der Psychoanalyse untersucht. Bei der Beleuchtung spezifischer Aspekte aus dem Leben des Patienten werden Reflexionen zum Thema Ressentiment und den aktualisierten Bedingungen des Gefangenseins in dieser Geschichte angestellt. Hervorgehoben wird der Beitrag der Psychoanalyse und ihrer theoretischen und technischen Mittel, das Ressentiment herauszuhören.

The discovery that propranolol, a very safe drug used for many years, also ‘dampens’ traumatic memory has been hailed as an ethical solution to all kinds of trauma, especially that experienced by soldiers and by rape survivors. This paper seeks to consider what it might mean to be able to forget the trauma associated with a gendered injustice such as rape. It explores first the current political and legal significance of rape, considering the way that this new treatment imagines the figure of the rape survivor in ways that sustain particular conceptions of injustice. It then turns to explore Wendy Brown's work on ressentiment, exploring whether the capacity to ‘therapeutically forget’ might avoid the tendency for trauma to cause a ‘wounded attachment’. It then turns to consider the role of embodiment in terms of these attachments. Furthering the exploration of the ways that dominant gendered modes of being-in-the-world shape and are shaped by rape, I turn to ask what the consequences of becoming ‘unaffected’ by trauma and injustice might have for our capacities to address them.

This chapter examines Nietzsche’s concept of convalescence by comparing it with the Freudian work of mourning. In contrast with influential subjectivist readings of Nietzsche—specifically those of Derrida and Deleuze—the comparison with Freud helps to show the suffered nature of socio-historically embedded subjectivity. In his preoccupation with convalescence , Nietzsche is articulating the conditions for the possibility of the overcoming of our bad culture. For Freud , the mournful slowly decathect from all subtle attachments to the lost object ; similarly, the convalescent undergoes a sustained decathexis from ressentiment . That this ordeal is conditioned by its relational context implies an imperative to transform social conditions.

Frank Sargeson’s stories and novels often contain violent episodes. These have generally been interpreted as responses to the suffocating influence of Puritanism in New Zealand society. They are also expressions of ressentiment, an emotional stance in which a person is consumed by feelings of anger, jealousy and helplessness. Ressentiment provides the psychological dynamics for much of Sargeson’s writing. This article traces the role of ressentiment in Sargeson’s works and assesses the extent to which it enhances or takes away from their quality.

What ultimately determines the shape of our lives is the flow of feelings, because our feelings are instinctive judgements of what is useful and harmful for us at particular stages of our growth, and originatewith those urges that currently dominate us. According to Colin Milton, Lawrence and Nietzsche share the same idea of the self, conceived as a complex organism made up of a community of impulses, hierarchically disposed, whose basic features are dynamism and fluidity. The lack of stabil...

This article explores the significance of resonance as a mode of social causality in response to William Connolly's book, Capitalism and Christianity, American Style. While applauding Connolly's identification of "affinities of spirituality" as effective in forming American politics, it suggests that the character structure of ressentiment that is encountered in right-wing Christianity and politics may be the result of instability. Examining the economic basis for growth and instability in the creation of dollars in the form of debt lacking an underlying guarantee, it suggests that this instability is felt throughout American society in everyday experiences of credit and debt.

A key problem for modern social theory is the question of how singularity is possible for radically socialized subjects. This article focuses on Nietzsche's notion of convalescence as offering a coherent approach to this problem. For Nietzsche, the convalescent undergoes a sustained, suffered detachment from the idealistic culture of ressentiment that deprives her of her singularity. A brief comparison of convalescence to the Freudian notion of the work of mourning helps to clarify the suffered nature of the slow bit by bit decathexis from the internalized remnants of ressentiment. This helps to illuminate the significance of the performative drama of Zarathustra's convalescence, and reveals shortcomings of dominant philosophical readings of Nietzsche – specifically those of Derrida and Deleuze – that abstract from the suffered ordeal of the convalescent who finds her singularity only to the extent that she concretely and continually works herself out of the internalized and external forms of coercive culture.

This essay examines the politics of transitional justice through the notion of forgiveness. Conventional notions of forgiveness and justice, as they have been adopted for and utilized in the numerous truth commissions around the world as well as in the theories supporting the work of the commissions, corrupt the transitional process into what Derrida aptly calls the conditional forgiveness of “social therapy. ” One major shortcoming in these theories has been their inability to adequately deal with the issue of resentment, i.e., the victim who refuses to forgive. Through a closer investigation into the phenomenology of ressentiment (Nietzsche, Max Scheler, Jean Amery), the essay proposes to interpret resentment as a continuation of the suffering that the victim has originally endured. Juridified and subjected to the therapeutic rationalizations of truth commissions, resentment coagulates into a suffering with a utilitarian value. Finally, this essay discusses the possible ways in which a theory of...